Carey Denies Any Knowledge Of Teamsters Fund Diversion

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: January 22, 1998

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21—
Ron Carey, the teamsters' president, told a court-appointed review board today that he neither knew about nor participated in a scheme in which several aides diverted union money into his campaign coffers.

Mr. Carey made these denials in sworn testimony at a hearing in which the Independent Review Board, which oversees the union, is weighing charges that he authorized the campaign finance scheme and should therefore be expelled from the teamsters.

Three of Mr. Carey's campaign aides have pleaded guilty to a web of illegal fund-raising schemes, including having the union donate $735,000 to three liberal grass-roots groups for a get-out-the-vote effort during the 1996 Congressional elections. In return, those groups and their supporters were to channel money to Mr. Carey's re-election campaign.

To buttress Mr. Carey's case, his lawyers had Barry Colvert, a retired polygraph expert for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testify that Mr. Carey passed a lie-detector test in which he was asked whether he knew about or had approved the scheme.

Insisting that he delegated decisions on political gifts, Mr. Carey repeatedly denied knowing about the large donations to the three liberal groups: Citizen Action, Project Vote and the National Council of Senior Citizens.

When the review board's chief investigator, Charles Carberry, brought charges against Mr. Carey last November, he questioned the credibility of Mr. Carey's assertions that he knew nothing about such large donations. In filing those charges, Mr. Carberry gave credence to accusations by Jere Nash, Mr. Carey's campaign manager, that Mr. Carey had approved the scheme.

Mr. Carey's main lawyer, Reid Weingarten, argued that it would be unfair to find Mr. Carey guilty based on Mr. Nash's accusations, asserting that Mr. Nash is a convicted felon, has confessed to perjury and has incentives to incriminate Mr. Carey to reduce his expected prison sentence.

Throughout the hearing, which began on Tuesday at a Federal courthouse here, Mr. Weingarten said it would be a denial of due process to oust Mr. Carey unless Mr. Carey first had a chance to cross-examine Mr. Nash.

At today's hearing, Frederick Lacey, the review board's chairman, said he had asked Mary Jo White, the United States Attorney in Manhattan, to ask Mr. Nash to testify. A spokesman for Ms. White said her office had sought to have Mr. Nash appear at the Carey hearing.